U.S. Congress Should Give Lebanon Money

Howard Berman has a well-deserved reputation as a serious student of foreign policy who does not precipitously wield the legislative hammer to get his way. So his decision to put a hold on $100 million slated for support of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), based on his long-standing concerns about the LAF's ties to Hezbollah, have to be taken seriously. Berman argues that the more than $700 million that the United States has poured into the LAF has not prevented the Lebanese military from increasingly coming under the sway of Hezbollah. Moreover, the August 3rd firefight between Lebanese and Israeli forces, which left an Israeli officer dead and another Israeli soldier wounded -- apparently shot by sniper -- as well as two Lebanese dead, and for which even the United Nations took Israel's side, itself an unusual development, has reinforced Berman's case.